The Problem of Moral Luck

• E.g. Two rescue cases: one unsuccessful, the other successful.

• How should we assess the two agents and their actions from a moral point of view?

• This seems to support the (Kantian) Condition of Control: our moral assessment of a person or a person's actions should be based solely on (fill in...)

___________________________________________________________.

• But there is a puzzle here. It turns out that we DO often morally assess people and their actions in a way that depends largely on circumstances beyond their control.

o E.g. two drunk driving cases.

• Moral Luck: the idea that a person or his actions CAN legitimately be morally assessed even for some things that depend on circumstances beyond his control.

Moral luck is a paradoxical idea, because although it does seem to be deeply embedded in our ordinary practice of moral judgment, as Nagel illustrates, it's in obvious tension with the Condition of Control (above).

Puzzle: how can we legitimately both accept the Kantian condition of control, as illustrated by the two rescue cases, AND also make moral judgments that seem to allow for moral luck, as illustrated by the two drunk driving cases? There seems to be an inconsistency here. How can we resolve this tension?

• THREE CATEGORIES OF CASES THAT SEEM TO INVOLVE SOME KIND OF MORAL LUCK:

(1) FIRST CATEGORY: Circumstances outside your control affect the results of your volitions, which in turn affects what you wind up having done, and this in turns affects our moral assessments. [E.g., two drunk driving cases.]

(2) SECOND CATEGORY: Circumstances outside your control affect your opportunities, motivations, pressures and temptations, thus indirectly affecting your volitions or choices themselves (even though they are themselves still within your control), which in turn affect our moral assessments. [E.g., two husband cases.]

(3) THIRD CATEGORY: Circumstances outside your control--your upbringing, genetic endowment, life-experiences, especially early ones--affect your very character, the kind of person you are, and your very capacities and dispositions for decision-making, all of which affects both your choices and our moral assessments of your character and your actions.

• Problem: Much of who we are and what we do is not really under our own control. (Consider especially the third category above.) In light of that, we seem stuck with the following dilemma:

DILEMMA: either (1) we stick to the intuitive Kantian condition of control but then seem to wind up hardly being able to morally assess anything, since almost everything is deeply influenced by external factors beyond an agent's control, or (2) we embrace the idea of moral luck, but then have to reject the Kantian condition of control in many cases, which seems very puzzling: how can you judge and blame people differentially for things traceable to differences that weren't in their control?

This is a deep puzzle I'd like you to think about.

• In lecture, I will discuss some steps for resolving this dilemma and solving at least some of the puzzles (though some deep mysteries remain). Roughly, I will suggest that the condition of control is right for some kinds of case, but that in other kinds of case we should instead recognize the reality of moral luck and allow it a place in our moral thinking.
• I will also suggest that reflection on moral luck should increase our own sense of humility and compassion for others.